Another weekend of training and racing and another PR.

For the first time in several weeks I had a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday stretch where I could mix in a heavy dosage of PowerCrank'ing without running into a race.  On Friday I managed to sneak out after work for a 90 minute ride and was pleasantly surprised by how much muscle memory I have developed during the past few weeks and that I'm able to get on my bike and "go" without spending a mile or two re-discovering how to ride/pedal.   I have noticed that my saddle height has gone down by 2 or 3mm since I started using my PowerCranks and I think it is being driven by two things:

1.  I have greatly reduced the amount of ankle flex'ing (often called "ankle'ing" by fit folks) that takes place during my pedal stroke, because I have to keep my ankle relatively fixed in order to maintain cadence, timing, and pressure throughout my pedal stroke.

2.  I have also begun to engage my glut and hamstrings more in my pedal stroke, which is probably associated with #1 a bit as well.

I should note that the saddle height reduction has only taken place on my road bike and my TT position has remained stable.

On Saturday and Sunday I was able to mix several hours of PowerCrank riding in with my hard tempo rides in preparation for the Mt Hood Cycling Classic, which is coming up in two weeks.  At the end of my longer rides my hip flexors are pretty much numb and I get to a point where it's hard to maintain any level of pedaling coordination for more than 20 or 30 seconds.  By the time Monday came around my legs were pretty tired, but in new ways and my fatigue was pretty isolated in my hip flexors, but my quads felt pretty fresh.  I did the PIR TT for the second time this season (the first prior to my initial PowerCrank experience) and I am happy to say that I dropped more than 60 seconds off my original time!  

Progress is being made with my admittedly less-than-every-day usage of PowerCranks and demonstrates that even targeted mid-season usage can begin to develop power that can help you during a season.  Or, at least that's what I'm finding so far.

You can find a photo from the TT at: http://leonardjohnson.zenfolio.com/p508225301/e3501591a